Last Night’s “Community” found Abed, for whom TV shows are his structure for understanding the universe, upset that his favorite show “Cougartown” was only airing mid-season (a sign of imminent cancellation to most people versed in network programing practices).
Britta, always looking to solve problems, introduced him to the Britcom CT was based on: Cougartown Abbey (a hilarious reference to Downtown Abbey which was recently named the most critically acclaimed series of all-time by the folks at the Guinness Book). However, Abed seemed to be unaware that British shows are based on series not seasons, and like many CT Abbey ended after 6 episodes.
But Britta saved the day introducing Abed to Doctor Who.
By which I mean “Inspector Space-Time.”
This question of referentiality (if your a post-modernist) or citability(for the post-structuralists) has been a re-occurring problem for The Simpsons. Arnold Swarzenegger exists in the same world as his Simpsons parody Rainier Wolftcastle, they still see movies that exist in our world “Barton Fink” and “Naked Lunch” (most brilliantly used), but in a world where Space Mutants is the dominant horror franchise. Where Countdown is a show, but Oprah is Opal; Marge went on Jeopardy, but when Moe went on Who wants to be a Millionaire it was “Me Wantee!”
The Simpsons eventually decided to go entirely to correlatives, to their fake shows and films (Apes a Poppin!). In part this was the result of some disagreements between Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and Groening, and what eventually became “The Critic,” where specific parody was exorcised.
Community now faces a similar problem. By introducing not Doctor Who into a world where The Cape, Firefly, and Cougartown are frequently referenced and talked about, its a bit of a paradigm change. Is it that Doctor Who is just too ubiquitous? That Abed would have to have already known about it being an encyclopedia of geekhood? Or was it simply a copyright issue (either way I was really hoping Paul McGann would have played Doctor Spacetime [see what I unconsciously did there?] to really get messy in terms of canon and continuity in series).Or is it that it makes perfect sense that Britta is an Anglophile, and that if Britta, who has given us such gems as “Row boat cop” would be drawn to or associate herself with a show with a title like “Inspector Spacetime?”
How real does Dan Harmon want the show to be? The show’s been quite post-modern, but it always has a core of reality, of verisimilitude. The flourishes of referentiality are seen as lenses through which the characters see and make sense of the world (as seen in Jeff’s musical number daydream, or Abed’s Christmas breakdown). And how important is it that the referenced pop culture signifier match the pop culture signified? Is Dan Harmon, who is not just a smart writer but an obsessively methodical writer, trying to do something here? What effect does this deferred referentiality have? It does provide a sense of being “in” on the joke, or of figuring out the correlations: these are the IST’s version of the Daleks, of the TARDIS; etc. Their is viewer satisfaction in that respect. Prior to this the only major pop-culture artifact existing in the community world that didn’t exist in ours was “Kick Puncher.” But that stood in for a type of film (the direct to video rip-offs of popular sci-fi films that came out in the late 80’s and early 90’s, in this case Robocop). Inspector Spacetime is a direct substitute for a pop culture artifact that exists in our world but not in theirs. Or does it?
I guess the conclusion here is that I want Abed to discover the BBC’s policy of “wiping,” erasing their video tapes pre-1970. This should shatter his view of the world: if there were episodes of “Inspector Spacetime,” like episodes of “Doctor Who” that were filmed, but erased and no longer exist, did they happen? How does that fit into continuity and canon? These are all issues Harmon and co. are aware of, or playing with, but I’m not sure how the introduction of a non-real-world, “not Doctor Who” fits into this.
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ruip reblogged this from thefortnightly
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shwelbows reblogged this from thefortnightly and added:
Beautiful questions...wonderful subjects.
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thefortnightly posted this
